in the image of love: marriage, the family and the new ... something far greater than: the church...

#7 The New Evangelization Series #7 The New Evangelization Series

Carl A. Anderson and Michelle K. Borras

“The future of humanity passes through the family!”

In the Image of Love:Marriage, the Family andthe New Evangelization

C a T H O l I C I N f O r m a T I O N s e r v I C e C a T H O l I C I N f O r m a T I O N s e r v I C e

Through the sacrament of marriage, God’s love dwells inmarried love, healing it, transforming it and placing it at thecenter of the Church’s mission. In a world that is hungry fortrue communion, fidelity and forgiveness, the family is at theheart of the new evangelization.

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— Pope John Paul II

GeNeral eDITOr

michelle K. Borras, Ph.D.

Director of the Catholic

Information Service

maNUsCrIPT eDITOrs

andrew matt &

alton Pelowski

© Copyright 2014, Knights of Columbus.

all rights reserved.

Quoted works are copyright their

respective authors.

scripture citations adapted from the

revised standard version, Catholic edition

(san francisco: Ignatius, 1994).

The New Evangelization Series

1 What Is the New evangelization?

ParT I “fOr GOD sO lOveD THe WOrlD”2 “I Believe in You”: The Question of God in the modern World3 The mysteries of the life of Jesus4 a God Who Is Threefold love5 “We Have Come to adore Him”: an Introduction to Prayer at the

school of Benedict XvI

ParT II “CalleD TO lOve...”6 Called to love: John Paul II’s Theology of Human love7 In the Image of love: marriage, the family and the

New evangelization8 following love Poor, Chaste and Obedient:

The Consecrated life

ParT III ...IN THe CHUrCH, THe BrIDe Of THe lamB

9 “let It Be Done to me”: mary, the Origin of the Church10 With the Heart of the Bridegroom: The ministerial Priesthood11 The Transfiguration of the World: The sacraments12 light and silence: a eucharistic Diary

ParT Iv “lOvING IN DeeD aND IN TrUTH”13 What is freedom for?14 Justice: On the Dignity of labor15 Justice: The Gospel of life

ParT v “He lOveD Us TO THe eND”16 The Dignity of the suffering Person17 “Behold, I Died, and Now I live…”: Death and eternal life.

aPPeNDICes: TOOls fOr THe NeW evaNGelIzaTION

a The Beauty of Holiness: sacred art and the New evangelizationB Technology and the New evangelization: Criteria for Discernment

NIHIl OBsTaT

susan m. Timoney, s.T.D.

Censor Deputatus

ImPrImaTUr

Donald Cardinal Wuerl

Archbishop of Washington

archdiocese of Washington

COver ImaGe

Icon of the Holy family. The hand of the father sends the Holy spirit upon

the family with the son of God in its midst. The icon, located in the offices

of the Pontifical Council for the family, rome, Italy, was completed by

fr. marko Ivan rupnik, sJ and the artists of Centro aletti in 2012.

© Pontificium Consilium pro familia. Used with permission.

July 21, 2014

The nihil obstat and imprimatur are official

declarations that a book or pamphlet is

free of doctrinal or moral error. There is no

implication that those who have granted

the nihil obstat and the imprimatur agree with

the content, opinions, or statements

expressed therein.

In the Image of Love: Marriage, the Family and the New Evangelization

Carl A. Anderson &Michelle K. Borras

Contents

In the Image of Love: Marriage and the Family 1 In the Image of Love: Marriage and the Family

The Family in the New Evangelization25 A Proclamation of God’s Beauty27 The Family at the Heart of the Church’s Mission

31 Sources36 About

“There was a marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.

Jesus also was invited….” (John 2:1-2)

The Wedding at Cana. Holy Family Chapel, Knights of Columbus

Supreme Council, New Haven, Connecticut.

In the Image of Love:Marriage and the Family

Michelle K. Borras

Often, when people hear the phrase “the family and the newevangelization,” they understand this to refer to the need forthe Gospel to be better proclaimed to families so that theymight live in accord with the Church’s teaching. This is certainly one aspect of a renewed proclamation of the “goodnews of divine love” in our age.1 It is also one of the reasonswhy Pope Francis called for two synods of the world’s bishops in 2014 and 2015 to address precisely this theme.Nonetheless, proclaiming the Gospel to families by no meansexhausts the meaning of the phrase “the family and the newevangelization.”

Almost immediately in his pontificate, Pope Francisidentified a “social and spiritual crisis” so severe that, as weread in the preparatory document for the synod, “never be-fore has proclaiming the Gospel on the Family … been moreurgent and necessary.”2 We might ask: Why is it so urgent?Is it because the Church’s apparently outmoded teachingseems senseless to many? Because our modern Western societies seem to be on a collision course with centuries-oldChristian values and traditions? Or is there something at

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stake far more essential to every human being than the alleged desire of a few clerics, to whom scarcely anyone paysattention anyhow, to impose their taboos on others?

What if that phrase, “the family and the new evangeliza-tion,” actually refers to something beautiful – something indispensable for the inhabitants of a world that, for all itstechnological progress, seems to be becoming increasinglyinhuman? What if “proclaiming the Gospel on the Family”means something far greater than: The Church needs to “dosomething” so that families “follow the rules”? Would it notbe far more meaningful to say that just as the family needsthe Church, the Church – and the world – needs the family?

St. John Paul II, who issued the stirring call for a newevangelization, insisted that “the future of humanity passes through thefamily.”3 Pope Benedict XVI likewise affirmed repeatedly that“the new evangelization depends largely on the DomesticChurch.”4 These two pastors knew that just as the familyneeds God’s Word in its midst in order to be true to itself, the Church needs married love that allows itself to be indwelt by God’s love. The Church needs the family if she isto bear witness to this love in a world where community andenduring fidelity seem to be ever-scarcer commodities.

The theme “the family and the new evangelization” does not only mean that the family needs to be better evan-gelized. It means also and above all that the family is at the heartof the new evangelization. For despite all their imperfections, it is in marriages and families that true humanity enters theworld: People learn to find themselves by giving themselves,and grow in relationships of love to one another and to God.

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In marriages and families lived with integrity, human beings, whether they are believers or not and whether theyrealize it or not, first glimpse the beauty of the God they unconsciously seek. This God, Christians believe, is himself a communion of Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Or asSt. John writes with a simplicity that contains boundlessdepths, “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

***At the beginning of his pontificate, Pope John Paul II

wrote, “Man cannot live without love…. His life is senseless,if love is not revealed to him … if he does not experience it and … participate intimately in it.”5 While our society’s increasing suicide rates are proving this statement true inthe negative, even those who do not despair have restlesshearts. Like many people today, we may “hold a pessimisticinterpretation of the capacity of human nature to accomplish a lifelong commitment,”6 yet we still look for fidelity and are hurt by its absence. We look for beauty, for “human beings cannot exist without beauty.”7 We seekjoy, acceptance, love.

Every now and again, something makes us pause in ourrestless search. Someone who perhaps never experiencedreal tenderness, glimpses a young father firmly yet lovinglycorrecting his four-year-old daughter. An Asian womanwhose government has forbidden her to have more than onechild bursts into tears at the sight of a lively group of siblingsarguing, playing together, helping one another – moved asmuch by the fact that this kind of beauty exists in the worldas by what she has lost.

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We notice that marriage of our coworker or friend, whichcannot help but attract attention. It has its faults, to be sure,yet the spouses “live [their] love for each other and for every-one, sharing joys and sufferings, learning to seek and to grant forgiveness,”8 in an enduring commitment thattranscends the two of them. It is fruitful even beyond thechildren who reflect something of their parent’s unity, for itsheds a kind of light all around them.

Sometimes even our own, terribly imperfect marriagesand families allow us to experience a moment of truth, ofreal acceptance or unexpected help that reminds us of wordsthat seem somehow bigger than us: “I take you…” – with yourstrengths and weaknesses, your past, present and future,your bodily capacity to generate life and your spirit – “untildeath….”

We may not know it, but when we have an experiencelike this, a ray of God’s light falls over us. We may never haveread a word John Paul II wrote, but something stirs in us:“Man cannot live without love.” However much we maywound one another at times, my spouse, child, parent,brother or sister, I cannot live without deeply human, tenderand unbreakable love.

Those who have a familiarity with Scripture will realizethat in those moments, we find ourselves once again at theorigin of the proclamation of the Gospel.

***Two thousand years ago, at Cana in Galilee, the Son of

God incarnate chose a marriage feast as the setting for the

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first public sign of his saving mission. “There was a marriageat Cana in Galilee,” we read in John’s Gospel, “and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited … with hisdisciples” (John 2:1).

The newlyweds at Cana were poor. Though most of theguests had not yet noticed, it seemed as if the one thing theycould give to others had already run out for them. “They haveno wine,” Mary said quietly (John 2:3). They are like us, whoselove at times seems to run dry; who bear the wounds of aspouse’s or parent’s infidelity or abandonment; or who tryto cover over the staleness of our everyday family relationswith increasing amounts of work and entertainment. They– like us – seem to have exhausted their joy.

That newly married couple did not know that amongtheir guests stood the Bridegroom of Israel, of the Churchand of mankind. “He who has the Bride is the Bridegroom,”John the Baptist would later say of Jesus, testifying to the presence of the long-awaited Messiah (John 3:29). Jesushimself said nothing at that wedding, except for a brusqueanswer to his mother and a word to the waiters. But withthis word, the marriage of a Galilean couple too poor to afford enough wine for their feast was caught up into a manifestation of God’s glory.

“Authentic married love is caught up into divine love,”the Second Vatican Council tells us.9 If we have trouble understanding what those words might mean for us,whether we are struck by the strength of a marriage or ourloves seem broken and poor, we need only to ponder thatwedding at Cana. There, the unremarkable marriage of two

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children of Israel contained the unbreakable Covenant –Jesus, the One who wed God and man – in its midst.

That humble wedding, with its fragile pledge of humanfidelity and its promise of fruitfulness, was the place Jesuschose for the hidden beginning and the abiding foundationof the public proclamation of God’s kingdom: “Jesus said to[the waiters], ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled themup to the brim…. ‘Now draw some out, and take it to thesteward of the feast.’” The steward tasted it and turned to thebridegroom in astonishment: “You have kept the good wineuntil now!” (John 2:7-10).

Water became good, rich wine for the joy of a weddingfeast, just as our fallible human loves are transformed whenthey open themselves to the divine guest present withinthem. “This, the first of [Jesus’] signs” (John 2:11), stands atthe beginning of what Pope Francis has called the “joy of theGospel,” which “fills the hearts and lives of all who encounterJesus.”10 There at Cana, as now, human love was caught upinto divine love, and “he manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him” (John 2:11).

***The world’s cultures have always intuited that married

love has something to do with God. The two loves, humanand divine, have been inextricably linked from the momentthe first man and woman turned to one another with aglimmer of recognition: “You…” – or, in the exclamation thebook of Genesis places on Adam’ lips, “This at last is bone ofmy bones and flesh of my flesh!” (Genesis 2:23). Behind

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the human “you,” man and woman glimpsed, however inarticulately, the divine “You,” who “chose us … before the foundation of the world … in love” (Ephesians 1:4-5) and whogave us such a gift.

When the human person was created male and female,in the image and likeness of God (cf. Genesis 1:27), the good-ness of creation became manifest to someone – or rather, to two persons – other than God. In fact, something of themystery of the Creator himself became manifest in them andin their “innate vocation” to love. The Catechism of the CatholicChurch explains: “God who created man out of love also callshim to love – the fundamental and innate vocation of everyhuman being. For man is created in the image and likenessof God who is himself love. Since God created him man andwoman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absoluteand unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, verygood in the Creator’s eyes.”11

This “intimate community of … life and love,”12 made upof man and woman, revealed the power at the origin of theuniverse. “In the beginning,” it already reflected the Lovethat we call “God.” Of course, in the act of creation narratedin the first two chapters of Genesis, God had not yet fully revealed himself. All we have is that mysterious divine “We,” which seems to suggest something of the richness ofGod’s life: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”(Genesis 1:26). And we have the result of that deliberation: acreature who bears even in his body the signs that he iscalled to a free, exclusive, fruitful and faithful gift of himselfto another. We have the human person, made in the imageof Love.

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John Paul II said that with the creation of the human person as male and female, a “primordial sacrament” entered the world.13 In this context, he meant “sacrament”in a sense broader than but related to what we mean whenwe speak of the Church’s seven sacraments. Man andwoman, who are called to make a total and enduring gift ofthemselves to one another, are a kind of original sign that“efficaciously transmits in the visible world … the mysteryof divine life.”14

With these words, John Paul II described a truth so fundamental to God’s intention in creating the universe andso central to human existence that sin and death could notdestroy it. From the moment God first blessed man andwoman, commanding them to “be fruitful and multiply” andto care for creation (Genesis 1:28), “the love between thespouses is nothing less than the visible presence of God’s lovein the world.”15

God wanted to be present in his creation. Indeed, hewanted to share his own life with his creature. Thus heplaced at the culmination of creation, not something primarily functional or useful, but a person – a being capableof receiving a gift and becoming a gift for another. John PaulII wrote: “God is love (cf. 1 John 4:8) and in himself he lives amystery of personal loving communion. Creating the humanrace in his own image … God inscribed in the humanity ofman and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion.”16

In the book of Genesis, we see that Eve’s very being callsAdam, and vice versa, to a gift of self that is total, faithful and

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fruitful. This gift involves body and soul, affections and will,past, present and future: “Therefore a man leaves his fatherand his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become oneflesh” (Genesis 2:24). Something absolutely essential not justto the human person, but to all of creation becomes visiblein this “unbreakable union of their two lives,”17 which isjoined by God himself (cf. Matthew 19:6).

Sin – that is, human beings’ infidelity and refusal to love – dulled our perception of God’s original plan, but itcould never erase the mark God left on the work of his hands. In the “vocation to marriage … written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator,”18 we begin to understand that creation, like everyman and woman in it, is oriented toward a covenant.

***This glimpse of God’s original intention for marriage and

the family could strike us as an unrealistic idealization. Howcan it still be relevant when human history, like each of ourpersonal histories, contains a sorry litany of discord and infidelity? As a result of their ruptured relationship with God,the first husband and wife already began accusing one another (cf. Genesis 3:12). With their deliberate disobedience,lust entered the world; they had to hide themselves not justfrom God, whose love is pure and ungrasping, but from oneanother. Their children began killing one another out of envy.

All of this, which Genesis also describes, seems to continue through history right into our own lives. We areoften afraid of our closest relationships, for while we desire

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a love that is unbreakable, “strong as death” (Song of Songs8:6), we know too well the pain of infidelity and the flight ofinfatuation. We may bear in our hearts and even in our bodies the deep wounds of rejection, violence and domina-tion. We may experience the emptiness of infertility and wemust face the finality of death. We hide from our own disor-dered loves, our feeling of inadequacy and the selfishnessthat closes us to new life.

Yet Scripture shows us something deeper, stronger andmore enduring than this history of sin. For while the storyof God’s chosen people in the Old Testament is full of humanbetrayal and failed love, it also tells of a far greater fidelity.However much human beings may try to forget, God remembers what he intended. He is faithful to the work ofhis hands. Pope Benedict explained:

The truth about marriage and the family, deeply rooted in the

truth about the human being, has been actuated in the history of

salvation, at whose heart lie the words: ‘God loves his people.’ The

Biblical revelation, in fact, is first and foremost the expression of a

history of love, the history of God’s Covenant with humankind.

Consequently, God could take … the union of a man and a woman

in the covenant of marriage as a symbol of salvation history.19

Speaking to married couples, John Paul II once said thatthe covenant God made with the people of Israel in the OldTestament is “not a simple political contract: … in it, the Lordcommits his Word and his Life, [the covenant] calls forth loveand tenderness. The covenant is expressed through the sign

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of marriage.”20 God loves Israel like a bridegroom loves hisbride, and is as grieved by her idolatry as a husband wouldbe by his wife’s repeated faithlessness. Throughout a history in which the people accepted polygamy and Moses permitted divorce because of their “hardness of heart”(Matthew 19:8), God remembered that for which he had created mankind.

At last, after a centuries-long preparation, came “the full-ness of time”: “God sent his Son, born of a woman’ (Galatians4:4)…. ‘The Word was made flesh’” (cf. John 1:14). Here at lastwas “an unbreakable Covenant, for nothing could any longerseparate man from God, united forever in Jesus Christ.”21 TheSon of God incarnate “seals the Covenant in the blood of hiscross and ‘sends his Spirit’ (cf. John 19:30) on the Church …the beloved and fruitful Bride who begets new children untilthe end of time.”22 All the men and women throughout history who sought an enduring love can at last lift up theirheads: This is the Covenant to which all human love pointedfrom the beginning of history. From this “great mystery” ofthe union of Christ and the Church, every Christian marriagedraws its love and its life (cf. Ephesians 5:32).

Discord and betrayal no longer have the last word, once“God radicalizes his love to the point that he himself becomes, in his Son, flesh of our flesh.”23 In this way, PopeBenedict explained, “God’s union with humankind acquiredits supreme, irreversible form.”24 In Jesus Christ, God lovedus “to the end” of death and beyond it (cf. John 13:1). He gaveus himself forever, in a gift that Jesus expressed very simplyon the night before he died: “He took bread, and when he had

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given thanks broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is mybody which is given for you…. This … is the new covenant inmy blood’” (Luke 22:19-20).

There is something final about this love. In it, we alreadyglimpse the end of history, which the Book of Revelation describes as the joyous “wedding feast of the Lamb” (19:9).Men and women through the centuries would be called toleave everything, including the possibility of earthly marriage, in order to become a living reminder of that wedding feast. By following “the Lamb wherever he goes” (Revelation 14:4), they point to the divine Love that dwells inevery marriage.25

The end, however, also sheds light on “the beginning.”That is, it reveals what we men and women were made for,and why we cannot live without love. Pope Benedict explained that in the “new and eternal Covenant,” men andwomen rediscover something buried deep in their nature,which had been obscured through mankind’s long history ofsin. God’s love for the world and for every human being inJesus Christ shows them the “blueprint of human love … thatreciprocal ‘yes’ which cannot be revoked” and which is notafraid to be fruitful.26

Even if they – that is, most of us – try to forget it or failto correspond to it, they recognize such a “yes,” for such a“blueprint” was written into the roots of their being. Theywere made for it and they belong to it. For this reason, thisirrevocable “yes” “does not alienate men and women but setsthem free from the different forms of alienation … in orderto restore them to the truth of creation.”27

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***God’s love does more than restore human love to its

original truth. At Cana, human love was not simply “blessed”and left unchanged. When Jesus contradicted the Jewishpractice of divorce and remarriage – “from the beginning itwas not so,” he said (Matthew 19:8) – he was not simplybackpedaling to the relationship of the first man and womanbefore the Fall. Rather, when the Word became flesh, suffered, died and rose again, human love was not only re-stored, but also transfigured. Now redeemed, human lovewould manifest God’s glory, like water that had suddenly be-come wine. It was, in the language of Vatican Council II,“taken up into divine love.”28

In Jesus Christ’s total gift of himself for the Church andfor the world, God certainly blessed human love. He did so bymaking it bigger, broader and deeper than it could be on itsown: He made it an expression of his love. He allowed thecommunion of a baptized man and woman to share in theexclusive, indissoluble and fruitful Covenant he himselfmakes with mankind. His zealous love for his one Bride, theChurch, upholds a husband’s and wife’s love even in its moments of weakness. His fidelity, “strong as death” (Songof Songs 8:6) undergirds their stumbling attempts to befaithful. And if they do not close themselves off from God’s presence in their midst and from his gift of new life,his Holy Spirit makes them share in the fruitfulness of theredemption.

This is what Benedict XVI meant when he told marriedcouples that “by means of a special gift of the Holy Spirit,

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Christ gives you a share in his spousal love, making you asign of his faithful and all-embracing love for the Church.”29

It is also what John Paul II meant when he said that God’sCovenant in Jesus Christ does not just “inspire” Christianmarriages. If they are open to this gift, it fills and transformsthem: “‘Appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling andaffectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will,’ through theLord’s gift, human love can be completely irradiated by theSource of love and truly manifest the new and eternalCovenant that shines through them.”30

The Catechism describes this same truth using more traditional language of the Church: “Christian marriage …becomes … the sacrament of the Covenant of Christ and theChurch. Since it signifies and communicates grace, marriagebetween baptized persons is a true sacrament of the NewCovenant.”31

The fact that God’s love has “taken up” human love in thisway, or that the marriage of baptized persons has been“raised … to the dignity of a sacrament,”32 does not meanthat the love of Christian spouses is suddenly perfect, or thattheir marriage is not also a lifelong work in progress, inwhich they slowly learn – and often fail – to correspond tothe great gift that has been given them. As John Paul II reminded us, “Love, like every other human reality, needs tobe saved.”33 Likewise, it does not mean that the love betweenthe spouses will be free of suffering, or from the need continually to relearn the value of forgiveness. The “supremeSacrament of the Covenant,”34 namely the Eucharist, remains an enduring sign that Christ saved us by dying:

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“The Covenant is sealed in the blood of the Lamb.”35

What the sacramentality of marriage does mean is thatin Christian spouses’ everyday attempts to live with and forone another “in good times and in bad, in sickness and inhealth”; in their acceptance of the gift of children and thedifficulties that come with raising them; in moments ofcloseness and in the painful labor of forgiving and askingforgiveness, they are like the couple at Cana – they have a divine guest in their midst. Vatican II taught:

The Savior of men and the Spouse of the Church comes into the

lives of married Christians through the sacrament of matrimony.

He abides with them … so that just as he loved the Church and

handed himself over on her behalf, the spouses may love each

other with perpetual fidelity through mutual self-bestowal.36

***“He abides with them.” Spouses whose hearts are open to

God amid the busyness, anxieties, joy and grief of family lifesoon come to experience that this divine presence meanseverything. The Bridegroom in their midst, who brings withhim the presence of his Father and the gift of his Spirit, isnot some kind of extra “insurance” for Christian marriage,which can more or less get along without God. Rather, he isits coherence and meaning, the light illumining the spouses’love, the presence that makes their bond fully and deeplyhuman.

Sometimes we are afraid of the single-heartedness involved in “forsaking all others” to give ourselves to this

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particular husband or wife and these children. Then, Christ’s“total … unique and exclusive love”37 shows us anew the dignity of these individual human persons. They are worthan undivided commitment, for they were worth his love, hislife and his death. In other words, in the light of Christ’s lovefor the Church his Bride, we understand that Christian marriage is an exclusive union.

Sometimes the communion between spouses risksbreaking down. The love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is stillbetween them, offering them the grace of reconciliationwith God and with one another. In the dazzling light of thecommunion of three Persons in the one God, Christianspouses remember – or perhaps learn for the first time – that“God created us male and female, equal in dignity, but alsowith respective and complementary characteristics, so thatthe two might be a gift for each other, might value eachother and … bring into being a community of love and life.”38

Christian marriage is a communion of love, in which the lovebetween man and woman is much more than an emotionalbond: It is a faithful and fruitful sharing of life.

On dark days, they may no longer know why they said “I do” to a person they no longer understand. In these moments, the Redeemer’s unfailing “yes” to creation and totheir love, safeguards their truest desire from their impulseto run away. In him, they see that true freedom is discoverednot by escaping commitment, but in a “definitive gift” ofoneself.39 From Christ’s unbreakable love, continually present to the Church in the sacrament of the Eucharist,they “learn … an unfailing fidelity” to the gift of their word

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and their life.40 There are tragic instances of abuse in whichspouses need physically to separate, but divorce is incom-patible with Christ’s faithful love. “What … God has joined,”Jesus said, “let no man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6): Christian marriage is indissoluble. Indeed, indissolubility isGod’s supreme act of mercy on the spouses’ love, for it allowstheir deepest desires to be realized.

Spouses may be afraid to open themselves to the gift ofnew life. This is understandable, for the conjugal act, inwhich man and woman express their total self-gift to oneanother through their bodies, is a “moment of special responsibility”41 – it is the moment in which they can become a father or a mother. Yet the Spirit of God who dwellsin them shows them that if they distort this act throughcontraceptive drugs or devices, they falsify their love. It would be like saying to one another: “I give you all of my-self, except for that profound mystery in me, my capacity tobecome a father or a mother. In other words, I don’t give youall of myself.” He helps them to abstain when necessary forresponsible parenthood, and to give themselves to each othercourageously and totally.

In fact, he does more. The Spirit of God, who can be described as “Love personified,”42 shows them that it is thevery logic of love to be fruitful, for love – communion, sharedlife – is a source of beauty, exuberance and generosity: It always overflows. Speaking at the World Meeting of Familiesin 2012, Pope Benedict described the many dimensions ofthis fruitfulness in married life:

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Dear married couples … your love is fruitful first and foremost for

yourselves, because you desire and accomplish one another’s

good, you experience the joy of giving and receiving. It is also

fruitful in your generous and responsible procreation of children,

in your attentive care for them…. And lastly, it is fruitful for

society, because family life is the first and irreplaceable school of

social virtues, such as respect for persons … trust, responsibility,

solidarity, cooperation.43

Marriage and the family are meant to be a place wherepeople experience this “joy of giving and receiving,” the expansive joy of communion. Even if a couple suffers thepain of being unable to conceive, they are caught up into thelogic of this generosity. If their love is open to God, they area place where he dwells. For them, too, Christian marriage isalways fruitful.

This kind of exclusive, faithful and fruitful communionbetween spouses gives a foundation and meaning to life. For despite all its shortcomings, the love between spouses,parents and children shares in the unbreakable Covenantthat God made with human beings. Through his gift, it reallycommunicates the Love without which man cannot live.

Yes, spouses often feel the burdensome monotony of thedaily tasks they perform for each other, parents are often exhausted in caring for children, siblings often find one another difficult to bear. Here and there, tragedy strikes.There is no Christian family that does not encounter thecross. And yet that cross is the source of all the light in theworld: Christ’s suffering was our redemption. His death

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leads to Easter. Our imperfect human relationships are theplace that God has chosen for the redemption to “take,” andfor his own, perfect love to begin to leak into the world.

***At this point, everything we have said about God’s plan

for man and woman, as well as about the redemption ofhuman love, can still seem somewhat abstract. Marriage isa sacrament, well and good, we might think. But isn’t theChurch’s teaching on this subject at best unrealistic? If wehave experienced the profound lack of love that people toooften encounter in the world, we might understandably betempted to think this, or to dismiss what we have heard.That is, until we no longer simply hear of it or read about it,but see it. Then, everything that had seemed vague or unrealsuddenly takes on the sharp contours of human lives. Whathad seemed impossible becomes the irrefutable testimonyof flesh and blood.

Terms like “the sacramentality of marriage” or “the mission of the family” may not mean much to most people.But those same people pay remarkable attention when, forinstance, a British married couple with small children mustsuddenly draw on all the resources of their faith and thepower of the sacraments: A life-changing injury leaves theyoung wife and mother unable to walk. They live an unques-tioned fidelity to one another and to raising their children,forgiving the stranger who caused the injury.

Gradually, their extended family, friends and other families gather around them, drawn by the peace and deep

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humanity of this couple. They want to help this family to bea family. But they also need this family, for it has becomewhat a family truly is: a place of healing for the peoplearound it, a “community … of life and love.”44 An olderwoman, noticing these people’s inexplicable joy, articulatedwhat many others secretly say in their hearts. “I want whatyou have,” she said to the young wife and mother, quicklyadding, “and don’t tell me it’s your faith.” “But it is,” said theyounger woman simply.

This family does not think of carrying out any extraordi-nary mission. Its members merely seek to be a family and tolove one another in truth. Yet in doing so, they are what PopeBenedict described when he once told families that whenthey live “with the strength that comes from the grace of thesacrament,” they reflect “the beauty of the Trinity” – thebeauty without which human beings cannot live. Their vocation “is not easy to live, especially today” the pope added.But when they live it, they proclaim the Gospel “not only byword, but … by ‘radiation,’ in the strength of living love.”45

Other married couples and families may live in less striking circumstances, but they do the same. “Your familyis different from most of the patients’ families we get inhere,” said a nurse to a woman bringing her elderly motherto visit her dying father at a California hospital. “You takecare of each other.” Or rather: You love….

In these marriages and families, husbands, wives, children and parents try to live out the gift that has beengiven them. They allow Christ’s unbreakable Covenant, present in the Eucharist, to inform their love; and the power

20

of forgiveness to transform them through the sacrament ofpenance. In them, their friends, neighbors and caregiverswitness the strength of fidelity and the joy of communionwhen, maybe, they had despaired of ever finding thesethings.

The people near such a family might be like “the worldgrown old” that John Paul II described, which “no longer believes in life, in love, in fidelity, in forgiveness.” They mightbe like us, who need to see “authentic love, fidelity even to the cross, the joy of life and the power of forgiveness.”Then, unexpectedly, the familiar concreteness of human relationships opens to heaven: “Through the fidelity of thespouses, they” – and we – “can glimpse the fidelity of the living God.”46

At the World Meeting of Families in 2012, Pope Benedictsummarized all of this. He told families that in the humbleattempt to “live your love for each other and for all with thehelp of God’s grace, you become a … domestic church” at theheart of the Church, sharing in her mission. “You become aliving Gospel” for a world that is dying for love.47

***

What is the “Gospel of the Family” that Pope Francisidentified as so “urgent and necessary” for our age?48 Differ-ent aspects of it have been discussed throughout these pages.It is the restoration of human love to its original intention,in which God created man and woman to image his love. Itis the unbreakable Covenant God made with humanity in

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Jesus Christ, and spouses’ sharing in this Covenant throughan exclusive, irrevocably faithful and fruitful communion.But the “Gospel of the Family” is also something more: It isthe gospel that the family has become, when it embraces itsmission “to guard, reveal and communicate love.”49

Spouses who are open to the God who called us to loveand families who welcome the divine presence in theirmidst, don’t just help one another. Others can see that theyare different even in the way that they deal with disagree-ments and grief. They radiate the peace of forgiveness, thestrength of fidelity and the beauty of communion all aroundthem. In our world, which is full of division and sorrow, theyproclaim with their whole lives that even if life can be hardat times, it is good to exist. They image the God who is Love.

The Second Vatican Council explained that in becomingflesh and revealing the Father’s love, the Son of God bringsto light much that is true about creation but that had beenobscured by sin. This is true especially of the human person:“It is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that themystery of man truly becomes clear…. In the … revelation ofthe mystery of the Father and of his love, [Christ] fully revealsman to himself and brings to light his most high calling.”50

The divine Word through whom the world was made (cf. John 1:10) was born like us, grew up in a human family,suffered, died and rose again to lead us back to the Father.Ever since he did this, the light that illumines the existenceof every man and woman – and the mission of every family– is the light of God himself.

John Paul II once said that the God Jesus revealed to us

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“is not a solitude.” He is the Father to whom Jesus prayedconstantly, and with whom he shared a union deeper andmore intimate than anything we can imagine: “The Fatherand I are one” (John 10:30). He is the Spirit that the dyingJesus breathed forth into his Father’s hands and that pouredforth from the risen Christ over all creation when the Fatherraised his only-begotten Son from the dead. This God is notsolitude. He is life itself, dynamic beauty, maximum communion – Trinity. As John Paul II, the Pope of the Family,explained, “our God in his deepest mystery … has in himselffatherhood, sonship, and the essence of the family, which islove.”51

This is the Love that dwells in the love between a manand a woman, transforming it through the sacrament and taking it into his service. This is the Source of the communion that all of us seek. Finally, this is the God whomthe family, a “saved and saving community,”52 proclaims tothe world.

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24

“The family has the mission to guard, reveal and communicate love.”

(St. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, 17)

Icon of the Holy Family. ©Pontificium Consilium pro Familia.

Used with permission.

The Family in the New Evangelization53

Carl A. Anderson

A Proclamation of God’s Beauty

When, in a 1983 address to the Latin American Bishops, St. John Paul II called for an evangelization “new in its ardor,methods, and expression,”54 he identified with remarkableinsight the crisis of our age. At the same time, he pointed usto that which alone can respond to it: a radical proclamationof Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, who reveals to us thetrue face of God and of man.

Our age is experiencing to an unprecedented degreewhat the prophet Amos called “not a famine of bread, nor athirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos8:1), and is suffering the consequences in what the writer C.S. Lewis calls “the abolition of man.” Such a situation begsmuch more of the Church and of Christians than cordial di-alogue coupled with humanitarian works, or a fleshless andtherefore unconvincing instruction in the doctrinal contentsof the faith. The men and women of today are in extremis. Theyare made for the Absolute, for worship, and for the absolute

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commitment that is part and parcel of love. They hunger forbeauty, communion, and joy. And when the Absolute himselfis lacking to a people and an age – if they know nothing ofhis boundless fidelity – they are mortally wounded. Deprivedof the source of beauty and communion, human beings respond with unspeakable violence.

For this reason, the new evangelization involves muchmore than efforts to revitalize pastoral programs or to transmit the faith more effectively to younger generations.It is also more than a “state of mind,” although these efforts and attitudes are laudable and necessary. The newevangelization is, in the words of the Lineamenta for the 2012Synod on the New Evangelization, the Church becoming“what she is by her nature.”55 It is a proclamation of thename of the living God, not simply in her words, but in herworship and in the radiance of the lives of her members –which alone make words true and credible. It is the proclamation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who, as JohnPaul II said, “is not a solitude … since he has in himself fatherhood, sonship, and … love.”56

If the new evangelization can be such an incarnateproclamation of the beauty of God, who is communion, it will also be a proclamation of the true name of man.

On the basis of these introductory remarks, we can consider the question: Just what is the place of the family inthe new evangelization? In a homily at Puebla de los Angelesin 1979, John Paul II remarked that “in the future, evange-lization will depend largely on the domestic church.”57 In thelight of our present discussion, it may be helpful to ask why.

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Certainly, as the Instrumentum Laboris of the same synod pointsout, the family is “the model-place for witnessing to faith because of its prophetic capacity for living the core values of the Christian experience.”58 Moreover, the family bears“responsibility in the formation and transmission of theChristian faith from the very beginnings of human life.”59

These statements touch on irreplaceable ways in which thefamily founded on the sacrament of marriage participates inthe Church’s task of evangelization.

The Family at the Heart of the Church’s Mission

There is, however, an even more fundamental reasonwhy the family is at the heart of the new evangelization, or of the “authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord”60

to which Pope Benedict XVI called us in the Year of Faith. Our faith teaches us that God is a unity in communion, aTrinity, that he is Love. This Love made an irrevocable gift ofhimself to us. God opened his life to us in his Son JesusChrist, who is God’s Covenant with his creation. And becauseman is made in the image of God, he “is incomprehensiblefor himself, his life is senseless” if he does not encounter thisLove.61

The world we live in, in which millions of people have yetto encounter this love in any meaningful way, needs thefamily to be an icon of the God who is communion. It needsto see the God revealed by Jesus Christ saving man in all hisrelationships. This world which is starved for meaning needsto see all the elements of human life – which Pope Benedict

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identifies as “the joy of love … the drama of suffering andpain, the power of forgiveness in the face of an offence received and the victory of life over the emptiness of death”– visibly finding “fulfillment in the mystery of [Christ’s] …becoming man.”62 In other words, the world needs to seefamilies that are true communities of life, love, and forgive-ness. Such families are truly human communities, which canthus point their unbelieving brothers and sisters to thebeauty of the God who is a communion of love.

For this reason, as St. John Paul II taught us, the family isessentially missionary. Its mission, which flows from its being,is far greater than any external activities of evangelization,social or political reform to which Christian families committhemselves. Every such activity will bear fruit only when itflows from the far more foundational mission that places thefamily founded on sacramental marriage at the heart of the very mission of the Church. In the words of John Paul II,“the family has the mission to guard, reveal and communicate love.”This love is a reflection of the Trinitarian communion andshares in “God’s love for humanity and the love of Christ theLord for the Church his bride.”63

In the Church’s mission of evangelization, love alone is“effective” – the love of the crucified and risen Lord, whichChristian spouses first receive as a divine gift and a task, andwhich is their genuine participation in the life of God. No amount of worldly influence or power, no technologicalinstruments, and no pastoral planning can take its place.This love, which the family has the task of living and communicating, is the driving force of evangelization. It is

28

what allows the proclamation of the Gospel to “permeateand transform the whole temporal order, assuming and renewing cultures.”64 This love alone, when it is authenti-cally lived in families whose members convert anew to itevery day, can be the basis of a genuinely human culturewhich St. John Paul II called a “civilization of love.”65

With all this in mind, it is my hope that pastors, bishopsand religious become ever more conscious of the pressingneed to help the Christian family in its mission “to becomewhat it is”:66 an icon of God’s own communion. This is theonly way for the family to be a place of healing and of humanity for the men and women of our time. Christian fam-ilies may in fact need to be encouraged to become active inparishes and ecclesial groups, or helped in the crucial task oftransmitting the faith to younger generations. But above all,families need help simply in coming to an awareness of whatthey are: a saved and saving community,67 a sacramental reality at the heart of the Church’s mission of evangelization.

Such assistance is needed not only for the sake of thefamily itself. Our world, in which ever increasing numbersof our brothers and sisters are deprived of God and thus of agenuine experience of communion and joy, need this. Thosewho do not believe or whose faith wavers need the family tobe a living witness to the God who is Father, Son and HolySpirit, the source of all the beauty in the world.

Now, as in the first centuries of Christianity, it remainsthe case that the greatest proof of the truth of Christianityis not our words, programs or argumentation. All of that hasits place and serves. But that which most helps our brothers

29

and sisters understand what it means to be human, to bemade for the Absolute, to be made for faith, hope and love, isthis exclamation on the lips of the unbelievers in the firstcenturies of Christianity: “See how they love one another!”68

Receiving and bearing witness to this love, withoutwhich faith remains incomprehensible and its transmissionimpossible, is the primary contribution the family can maketo the new evangelization. When Pope John Paul II cried out,“Family, become what you are!”69 he summoned every family founded on baptism to its essential and irreplaceablemission. The family is called to reveal to the world the faceof God, and thus to become a place where our unbelievingbrothers and sisters – and we ourselves – can catch sight ofthe true face of man.

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Sources

1 Synod of Bishops, Preparatory Document for the III Extraordinary

General Assembly, “Pastoral Challenges to the Family in the

Context of Evangelization,” 2

2 Ibid., 1.

3 John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio [On the Role

of the Christian Family in the Modern World], 86.

4 Benedict XVI, Address to Participants at the Plenary Assembly of

the Pontifical Council for the Family, December 1, 2011.

5 John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptor Hominis [The Redeemer

of Man], 10.

6 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Educational Guidance

in Human Love, 46.

7 XIII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops,

Lineamenta: The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian

Faith, 157.

8 Benedict XVI, Homily at the 7th World Meeting of Families,

Bresso Park, Milan, June 3, 2012.

9 Vatican Council II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the

Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, 48.

10 Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 1.

11 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1604.

12 John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, 13.

13 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body,

trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006), 203; General Audience of February 20, 1980.

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Sources (continued)

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Id., Familiaris Consortio, 11.


18 Ibid, 1603.

19 Benedict XVI, Address to the Participants in the Ecclesial Diocesan Convention of Rome, June 6, 2005.

20 John Paul II, Address to Members of the Movement “Teams of Our Lady” (September 23, 1982), 1.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.


24 Ibid.

25 Cf. John Paul II, Address to Members of the Movement “Teams of Our Lady” (September 23, 1982), 6: “Celibacy ‘for the Kingdom’ … reminds all that God’s supreme gift is not a creature, however beloved, but the Lord himself: ‘Your Maker is your husband’ (Isaiah 54:5). The true Bridegroom of the definitive wedding feast is Christ, and the Bride is the Church.”


27 Ibid.

28 Vatican Council II, Gaudium et Spes, 48.


June 3, 2012.

32

30 John Paul II, Address to Members of the Movement “Teams of Our

Lady” (September 23, 1982), 2.





34 Ibid., 2.

35 Ibid., 3.




June 3, 2012.

39 Id., Address to the Participants in the Ecclesial Diocesan

Convention of Rome, June 6, 2005: “The greatest expression of

freedom is not the search for pleasure without ever coming to a

real decision; this apparent, permanent openness seems to be the

realization of freedom, but it is not true. The true expression of

freedom is the capacity to choose a definitive gift in which

freedom, in being given, is fully rediscovered.”



41 John Paul II, Letter to Families, 12.

42 Id., Encyclical Letter Dominum et Vivificatantem [On the Holy Spirit

in the Life of the Church and the World], 10.

33

Sources (continued)


June 3, 2012.



June 3, 2012.




June 3, 2012.

48 Synod of Bishops, “Pastoral Challenges to the Family in the

Context of Evangelization,” 2.



51 John Paul II, Homily, Puebla de los Angeles, Mexico,

January 28, 1979.

52 Id., Familiaris Consortio, 49.

53 Originally submitted as an intervention at the XII Ordinary

General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, October, 2012.

54 John Paul II, Address to the 19th General Assembly of the Latin

American Bishops (CELAM), March 9, 1983, 3.


Lineamenta, 2.

56 John Paul II, Homily, Puebla de los Angeles, Mexico,

January 28, 1979.

34

57 John Paul II, Address to the Third General Assembly of the Latin

American Bishops (CELAM), January 28, 1979.


Instrumentum Laboris: The New Evangelization for the Transmission

of the Christian Faith, 110.

59 Ibid., 111.

60 Benedict XVI, Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei, 6.

61 Cf. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 10.

62 Benedict XVI, Porta Fidei, 13.



Instrumentum Laboris, 92.

65 Cf. John Paul II, Letter to Families, 13.

66 Cf. id., Familiaris Consortio, 17.

67 Cf. ibid., 49.

68 Tertullian, Apology, 39, 7.


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About the Authors

Carl Anderson has served as Supreme Knight of the Knights ofColumbus since 2000. He was the founding dean of the WashingtonSession of Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriageand Family in 1988, and remains its Vice President. He is a memberof the Pontifical Council for the Family and co-author with FatherJosé Granados of Called to Love: Approaching John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.

Michelle K. Borras, Ph.D., is director of the Catholic Information Service. She received a B.A. in English Literature from Harvard University; an S.T.L. from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Rome; and a Ph.D in theologyfrom the Institute’s Washington, D.C. session. Dr. Borras taught at theJohn Paul II Institute in Washington as an adjunct professor during the 2010-2011 academic year, and has given seminars inCatholic literature, the patristic interpretation of Scripture, and thetheology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. In addition to translating extensively, Dr. Borras has published articles in the areas of Catholicliterature and theology.

About the Catholic Information Service

Since its founding, the Knights of Columbus has been involved inevangelization. In 1948, the Knights started the Catholic InformationService (CIS) to provide low-cost Catholic publications for the generalpublic as well as for parishes, schools, retreat houses, military instal-lations, correctional facilities, legislatures, the medical community,and for individuals who request them. For over 60 years, CIS hasprinted and distributed millions of booklets, and thousands of peoplehave enrolled in its catechetical courses.

“Catholic Information Service” is a registered trademark of the Knights of Columbus.

36

GeNeral eDITOr

michelle K. Borras, Ph.D.

Director of the Catholic

Information Service

maNUsCrIPT eDITOrs

andrew matt &

alton Pelowski

© Copyright 2014, Knights of Columbus.

all rights reserved.

Quoted works are copyright their

respective authors.

scripture citations adapted from the

revised standard version, Catholic edition

(san francisco: Ignatius, 1994).

The New Evangelization Series

1 What Is the New evangelization?

ParT I “fOr GOD sO lOveD THe WOrlD”2 “I Believe in You”: The Question of God in the modern World3 The mysteries of the life of Jesus4 a God Who Is Threefold love5 “We Have Come to adore Him”: an Introduction to Prayer at the

school of Benedict XvI

ParT II “CalleD TO lOve...”6 Called to love: John Paul II’s Theology of Human love7 In the Image of love: marriage, the family and the

New evangelization8 following love Poor, Chaste and Obedient:

The Consecrated life

ParT III ...IN THe CHUrCH, THe BrIDe Of THe lamB

9 “let It Be Done to me”: mary, the Origin of the Church10 With the Heart of the Bridegroom: The ministerial Priesthood11 The Transfiguration of the World: The sacraments12 light and silence: a eucharistic Diary

ParT Iv “lOvING IN DeeD aND IN TrUTH”13 What is freedom for?14 Justice: On the Dignity of labor15 Justice: The Gospel of life

ParT v “He lOveD Us TO THe eND”16 The Dignity of the suffering Person17 “Behold, I Died, and Now I live…”: Death and eternal life.

aPPeNDICes: TOOls fOr THe NeW evaNGelIzaTION

a The Beauty of Holiness: sacred art and the New evangelizationB Technology and the New evangelization: Criteria for Discernment

NIHIl OBsTaT

susan m. Timoney, s.T.D.

Censor Deputatus

ImPrImaTUr

Donald Cardinal Wuerl

Archbishop of Washington

archdiocese of Washington

COver ImaGe

Icon of the Holy family. The hand of the father sends the Holy spirit upon

the family with the son of God in its midst. The icon, located in the offices

of the Pontifical Council for the family, rome, Italy, was completed by

fr. marko Ivan rupnik, sJ and the artists of Centro aletti in 2012.

© Pontificium Consilium pro familia. Used with permission.

July 21, 2014

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#7 The New Evangelization Series #7 The New Evangelization Series

Carl A. Anderson and Michelle K. Borras

“The future of humanity passes through the family!”

In the Image of Love:Marriage, the Family andthe New Evangelization

C a T H O l I C I N f O r m a T I O N s e r v I C e C a T H O l I C I N f O r m a T I O N s e r v I C e

Through the sacrament of marriage, God’s love dwells inmarried love, healing it, transforming it and placing it at thecenter of the Church’s mission. In a world that is hungry fortrue communion, fidelity and forgiveness, the family is at theheart of the new evangelization.

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in the image of love: marriage, the family and the new ... something far greater than: the church...

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